Wednesday News: ChicklitGirls charge $95 for reviews; threaten lawsuit to the author who publicized this; BN goes web based and promises new screen for readers

Let me set this up for you. Michelle Gorman apparently sent a review request to ChicklitGirls, a website that offers reviews of various genres. They claim good Christian values and promise to NOT give a negative review to any author. Further, they claim over 2.5 million views for their reviews from their site and via their contributions to the Books section of Before Its News. To Gorman and to other authors such as Grace Wen, a request for a review query generates a prompt for cash in return. Michele Gorman blogged about this and was threatened with a lawsuit. Likely afraid that a lawsuit would be forthcoming, Gorman redacted all the identifying information although Paula, from the ChicklitGirls’ website, commented to Gorman’s blog post and basically self identifies.

Michele Gorman: Should bloggers charge for reviews? – “The bloggers that are charging writers $95 for favourable reviews have contacted me to tell me that my comments are unethical and illegal. They asked that I remove their “website name from [my] twitter account and [my] article and anywhere else that [I] have posted it.” They said that they are nice girls, and then threatened that if I did not “please do as we ask, you will be hearing from our attorney, and will take the next step and action for defamation of character and business”. Further, they kindly offered that “instead, of smearing your name and books we choose to go the legal way, because we don’t like to hurt people and their reputations.” And they offered me some advice too: “You are young and need to learn a lot about life still, especially when it comes to business practices. What you are doing is causing others (especially the people that matter) to see you as a trouble maker, and then they won’t want to work with you.””Michele Gorman

ChickLitGirls Disclosure Page – “This blog is a collaborative blog written by a group of individuals. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content. The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified. About Chick Lit Girls Reviews Chick Lit Girls reviews books in a honest and forthcoming manner. Although we try to give our authors good/favorable reviews, it must be noted that we make no claim to and there is no guarentees of a positive review given by our reviewers.” Chicklitgirls (I highlighted the portions that MAKE NO SENSE)

Let’s unpack this starting with the legal threat because as most Dear Author readers know by now nothing gets my engine revved like baseless threats of an internet lawyer (a creature that is never identified by name and more rarely spotted than a unicorn). I’ve identified a number of things that the Chicklitgirls may want to consult their lawyer about:

Possible trademark infringement. All over the Chicklitgirls’ site is a slogan called “Goodreads for Women”. Given that “goodreads” is a trademarked name relating to books and book recommendations, it’s fair to say that “Goodreads for Women” is a slogan that could lead to mark confusion.

FTC violations. The FTC requires blogs to disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers. The Chicklitgirls disclosure does state that their content may be influenced by their compensation, but they aren’t clear for what items they are being compensated. Further, they go on to state in the same disclosure and on other parts of their site that their reviews are honest. The multiple contradictions work to negate any disclosure.

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Positioning for a SLAPP suit. Should the Chicklitgirls actually have a real lawyer (which I highly doubt) and would actually bring a suit against Michele Gorman (which would be on par with Charles Carreon’s ridiculous suits against the Oatmeal), they could face a SLAPP suit and their lawyer could face ethical complaints and Rule 11 Sanctions for bringing in a frivolous claim. Why? Because there is nothing defamatory about posting something that is true. Defamation is a FALSE statement that hurts someone’s reputation. TRUTH is always a defense. (You can read up on defamation in my four part series here). The only other possible claim I could think of was some breach of privacy but there cannot be any expectation of privacy when you are soliciting a business transaction unless there was some signed agreement beforehand which does not seem to exist and then it wouldn’t be a breach of privacy, but a breach of contract. Perhaps in conjunction with consulting their internet lawyer, they can also meet with a business consultant.

Can they back up their viewership claim? The Chicklitgirls claim 2.5 million views of their reviews to justify the $95 per review charge. Dear Author’s Alexa rating is 75,530 and the Chicklitgirls ranking is 479,815 on Alexa. We get over 450,000 page views a month so we know that the Chicklitgirls website views are much much lower. But what about their “partnership” with Before It’s News? BIN is a user generated site and anyone can upload content. In the “Books” section (which takes a while to locate), there are many book reviews posted. The most popular stories only get around 100 views. Where are the 2 million + views coming from?

The only people doing harm to the Chicklitgirls reputation is the Chicklitgirls.

Onto some real news:

Finding the ‘moral molecule’ – “What drives Zak’s hunger for human blood is his interest in the hormone oxytocin, about which he has become one of the world’s most prominent experts. Long known as a female reproductive hormone – it plays a central role in childbirth and breastfeeding – oxytocin emerges from Zak’s research as something much more all-embracing: the “moral molecule” behind all human virtue, trust, affection and love, “a social glue”, as he puts it, “that keeps society together”… Being treated decently, it turns out, causes people’s oxytocin levels to go up, which in turn prompts them to behave more decently, while experimental subjects given an artificial oxytocin boost – by means of an inhaler – behave more generously and trustingly. And it’s not solely because of its effects on humans that oxytocin is known as “the cuddle hormone”: for example, male meadow voles, normally roguishly promiscuous in their interactions with female meadow voles, become passionately monogamous when their oxytocin levels are raised in the lab.” The Age

Hmmm. I’m not sure I buy into this idea that oxytocin is a moral molecule but it is an interesting theory. h/t @SarahMayberry

Sapping Attention: Making Downton more traditional – “Digital humanists like to talk about what insights about the past big data can bring. So in that spirit, let me talk about Downton Abbey for a minute. The show’s popularity has led many nitpickers to draft up lists of mistakes. Language Loggers Mark Liberman and Ben Zimmer have looked at some idioms that don’t belong for Language Log, NPR and the Boston Globe.) In the best British tradition, the Daily Mail even managed to cast the errors as a sort of scandal. But all of these have relied, so far as I can tell, on finding a phrase or two that sounds a bit off, and checking the online sources for earliest use. This resembles what historians do nowadays; go fishing in the online resources to confirm hypotheses, but never ever start from the digital sources. That would be, as the dowager countess, might say, untoward.” Sapping Attention

This internet denizen created an algorithm to identify anachronisms. For language geeks and Downton Abbey fans alike. h/t Merrian

B&N Launches Cloud Service, Nook for Web – “Barnes & Noble has entered the cloud-based reading business with the launch of Nook for Web. The new platform works with all PC and Mac browsers and B&N said it will add support for tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices in the fall. “Publishers Weekly

B&N prepping new tablet with ‘revolutionary screen technology’ – “Now we’re getting word from a credible source that Barnes & Noble, a 7-inch pioneer with its Nook Color and Nook Tablet, is set to bring out out a new 7-inch model that features “revolutionary screen technology.” The source, who’s proven reliable in the past, wouldn’t elaborate on the specifics of that technology but said that it was developed in-house by Barnes & Noble (with the help of “another company”) and had not been seen in another product before.” CNet

I’m a little skeptical about revolutionary screen technology but maybe if it is coming from Microsoft? But if MS has revolutionary screen technology, then why haven’t they put that on any other device.

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

Comments

They said that they are nice girls, and then threatened that if I did not “please do as we ask, you will be hearing from our attorney, and will take the next step and action for defamation of character and business”. Further, they kindly offered that “instead, of smearing your name and books we choose to go the legal way, because we don’t like to hurt people and their reputations.”

If they don’t think it’s wrong for them to charge for reviews, why so pissy about the author talking about it? Obviously they know it’s NOT COOL, hence the threat, etc.

I am disappointed that I helped drive their page views up but I did visit the site out of curiousity. There is just so much wrong but what is most puzzling to me are the statements that “we just want to help the authors” (paraphrasing). Aren’t book reviews to help the reader?
Moreover, how does saying only nice things truly help authors. It’s like giving a trophy to everyone regardless of whether you win or lose. If you won’t offer constructive criticism (which is the only reason I could fathom paying someoen to read your book), how are you helping the auhor?
I hope the FTC catches on to the misleading nature of their site.

Nice way to monetize your reading time, considering you can slap together a “review” (applying the term lightly) from the blurb and the author biography in under twenty minutes (as is common practice in the “volume model of reviewing”, see top-rated Amazon reviewer/s).

I know it’s often a conundrum but I too wish you hadn’t linked to the RediculousGirls site.

“instead, of smearing your name and books we

….will write your name in the boys bathroom and fill your locker with garbage because we’re NOT young and WE don’t need to learn a lot about life . And we know a lawyer, maybe, sortof. Oh, and by the way, we are NOT bullies.

And who the hell are the “people that matter”?? Really, really started my day off on a sour note.

LMAO I read about that chicklit blog, and when I visited it all I could do was… laugh. I suspected they were full of hot air, people love to threat with law suits, but frankly, I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as what I found there. I am no attorney, but well, having worked in the litigation field for now over two and a half decades, and being married to one has allowed me to learn some basic things on the topic. They are their own worse enemies.

Edited to add: About time B&N incorporated a cloud type of system. I tend to prefer my ebooks in epub format, I also like their reading software better than I like Kindle, tbh, so I use it more, so Iike the idea.

Ugh. I visited there too. Although I will never ever do it again. It struck me how bad the review was, too. Not bad as in negative, but bad as in poorly written. I also love to write reviews, and the first review I saw there made me wince.

“In the first chapter she cleverly introduces the main character, Ellie, by telling us her thoughts, emotions and her views of the world around her, giving us, the readers, a good idea of who our protagonist is and what her life is like.”

A good (negative OR positive) review gives some sense of what makes the book unique, and secondarily, helps the author by directing the right readers to the book and the wrong readers away. Since they’re actually selling these things, which is horribly unethical to begin with, the least they could do was write reviews that don’t sound like they came out of a text generator. The book has a protagonist that appears in the first chapter! How ground-breaking!

O-0 But why would anyone want to read a review site where it’s basically stated upfront that they are going to be nice about everything that they read? How are you supposed to trust their judgement when you know that they’ll praise pretty much everything? I may not agree with all the reviewers on DA or SBTB but at least I’m sure that I’m getting an honest opinion and am unlikely to waste my money on something shoddily written.
As for paying for good reviews – its about as morally right as paying your friends to push up your Amazon rating and about as useful to the readers.

For $95, you’d think they could come up with something a bit more compelling than the fact that the main character is introduced in the first chapter. For $5, maybe that’s about all you could expect. But I can’t see why readers would read them or writers send their books for review. If it’s a new site, I suspect it will die soon.

O-0 But why would anyone want to read a review site where it’s basically stated upfront that they are going to be nice about everything that they read?

That’s what struck me about that blog. I don’t take any reviewer who has a policy of never writing negative reviews seriously…that’s just unintelligent.

I really dislike the idea of authors paying for reviews, especially on a blog that only writes positive ones. That says more about the authors than it does about the blogger. (But I’ll admit that I’d feel differently if the blogger in question was one I’d heard of and considered influential.)

I’m also struck by how they claim they want to support the industry and writers (I’d say the same to my paying customers), but the thing is, “the industry” (a term up for debate) needs more insightful, experienced, unbiased, critical reviewers who know that they are talking about – and they don’t tick any of those boxes. Looks to me like a money-maker above all else (based on the pathetically bad reviews posted on the blog).

I really don’t understand how any review site, book review blog or publication, even Kirkus who charges $425 for a review, can justify charging. There are so many review sites and blogs that will review a book for free and be happy to do so.

Better to take the $95 or whatever money and use it in advertising that may help with sales and gain interest.

I got the impression they were really hoping everyone would forget about them after Monday, allowing them to quietly carry on with this scam. THANK YOU for calling all of this out! It’s beyond ridiculous and laughable and I hope no authors further fall for this scam.

I checked out the Nook for Web. I like it. I still don’t read on my computer… but I have been eying the Nook Tablet.

I agree with Shiloh. Nice girls don’t scream lawyer… It seems to me they’re just trying to make a quick buck, but didn’t really think through their business model before doing so. Kind of sad to me, since I tend to map everything out when it deals with my business.

Okay, for $50 I will write a scathing review of your book and somewhere in there call you a dunderhead who should never have been allowed to touch a keyboard. I’ll post it on Amazon and Goodreads.

Then my partner Carolyn will come in and tell me I’m an idiot because it’s the best book she ever read and I’m just a big old mean reviewer who wouldn’t know my ass from a comma splice.

We’ll argue, throwing in rhetoric, slander and for an extra $10 some really choice insults that we’ve been perfecting for the last eight years of being friends.

Another $10 guarantees you a personalized GoodReads shelf from each of us. Mine will be titled something like Hated this book and my cat’s litter box is more interesting and Carolyn’s will say something like Loved this book and hate mean girl reviewers with cats.

Trust me, you’ll get a lot more interest in your book and for the $$ you pay us, we might even read it ourselves. But probably not.

I checked out the Nook for web and really like it, especially as I’ve never been able to get the Nook program running on my Mac. (Any advice on that, or should I consider it dead in the water?) But, I was wondering how the web app plays into their new monitoring/data collection? Would it be correct that because it’s a web based program there’s no way to avoid it, unlike a program based on your computer for which you can theoretically deny internet access?

I’m an attorney, a member of the First Amendment Lawyers Association, and a blogger, and like to write particularly about bogus legal threats that chill speech. I also like to connect threatened bloggers with pro bono counsel.

@Las: I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Some bloggers simply choose not to review the books which they read and don’t enjoy. That’s entirely their prerogative and it doesn’t make the reviews which they do post dishonest or unintelligent. There’s at least one blog I regularly read which has that policy and the reviews are always thoughtful and interesting, and give me a good idea of whether or not I will enjoy the book. That’s quite different from the kind of shilling going on at Chick Lit Girls, obviously.

@Ros: Having it as a written policy that one won’t write negative reviews makes all reviews unreliable for me, because knowing what you dislike and why tells me more about your tastes than what you do like. I also think it would create an environment where any kind of critical discussion is discouraged. I don’t read such blogs, so maybe that’s not always the case, but such a policy is reminds me a little too much of the, “critical reviews = bullying” nonsense that’s going around.

I’m tempted to write a book, just to use Lori’s service. Alas, it would probably be as terrible as the “mean girl” would say it was.

I don’t like cloud-based services. It assumes that everyone has unlimited broadband, which I don’t. Also, I like owning my books, and backing them up. if the book only existed in the cloud, why am I paying full price for it?

“You are young and need to learn a lot about life still, especially when it comes to business practices. What you are doing is causing others (especially the people that matter) to see you as a trouble maker, and then they won’t want to work with you.”

Gee, weren’t we just talking yesterday about the way women are shoved into the niceness shoebox (including by other women)? You shouldn’t speak up, shouldn’t speak out, because that’s causing trouble, and no one will like you. While I wouldn’t call this bullying per se (though I’d call it a lot of other things if I could stop laughing long enough to be coherent), it’s certainly a prime example of how the “you have to be nice” slapdown is rampant in our society.

I really don’t understand how any review site, book review blog or publication, even Kirkus who charges $425 for a review, can justify charging. There are so many review sites and blogs that will review a book for free and be happy to do so.

What about publications like PW that pay reviewers for reviews? Also, doesn’t Publisher’s Weekly charge for reviews of self-published books? I assume this is in lieu of the kind of advertising and promotional support that actual publishers would otherwise provide? Does that diminish the the perceived value or neutrality of those reviews?

I’m not trying to be snarky here – I’m simply trying to figure out what I think about the differences between paying a publication for a review (not a guarantee positive review, just a review), and using revenue earned from subscriptions and advertising to pay reviewers to review books for the publication. Does the presence of any monetary exchange around reviews taint the water, so to speak?

Lori fantastic idea. Also how about hiring “minions” to support your position. Might add extra drama, and would foil any one claiming sockpuppets. You could charge $5 per minion, and split the fees with your underlings.

@Las: In the case of the blog I’m thinking of, critical discussion definitely happens in the comments and disagreement is always allowed. The reviews are not always wholly positive about everything in the books, but I think she just prefers not to put the time and effort into reviewing books she hasn’t enjoyed. It works for me.

@Robin/Janet: I can’t speak for others, but I never read paid-for reviews from any publication. I always have issues trying not to see a “taint” about so-called “professional” reviews. As to reviews paid for by authors, I don’t even want to go there.

@Robin/Janet: You said “I’m not trying to be snarky here – I’m simply trying to figure out what I think about the differences… Does the presence of any monetary exchange around reviews taint the water, so to speak? ”

Amazon doesn’t permit paid reviews in the Customer Reviews section, so (in theory) Chicklit girls shouldn’t be allowed to post on Amazon (and what’s the point in a blog review if it isn’t also posted on the major consumer websites). In order to qualify as a customer review, the reviewer can have received NO COMPENSATION except a free copy of the product, which must be disclosed under FTC regulations.

Amazon does permit authors to post paid-for reviews (e.g. from Publishers Weekly or Kirkus) in the Editorial Reviews section of the book page. Yeah, that bit most of us ignore.

@Robin/Janet: I can see why they do it – not just because they’re not getting the same financial support as they do from publishers buying advertising, but also as a filter mechanism. I still don’t much like it and I would find it hard to treat those reviews on the same terms as the others they provide.

@Robin/Janet: Strictly speaking PW (not sure about Kirkus) doesn’t charge for “reviews”. They charge for your book to be listed in the special self-publishers supplement. They then pick a percentage of those books that they’re charging to list, and review those books only. Generally harshly. So you’re paying to be listed and the chance of a review.

As a way to get revenue it’s probably working for them. As value for money for self-publishers, not so much. An excellent review for an excellent book is still disadvantaged by being in the self-publishers ‘ghetto’ supplement. Paying a lot of money just to be listed would be depressing.

Thanks for the heads up about the review blog [I don’t even want to type the name] – I never knew ‘good Christian values’ included threatening to smear the reputation of someone who has the guts to disclose what amounts to a dirty little secret. I guess they’re not aware that the Internet is really a small place and once bad behavior is made public it usually goes viral.

“They claim good Christian values and promise to NOT give a negative review to any author.”

Methinks they aught to acquaint themselves with their Bibles, because their review practice isn’t exactly Jesus-y. I’m no theologian, but I’ve read enough of the Bible to know that Jesus, while given to acts of kindness and so forth, wasn’t exactly one to sugarcoat the truth. In many cases, he was brutally honest. To the question, “What would Jesus do?” the answer is probably not, “Write obsequious book reviews.”

@Mireya: Would you include reviews in newspapers and book supplements? Reviewing requires a lot of the reviewer, when entered into seriously — skill, time, intellectual energy, etc. I can see why people would only want to do it if they got paid for it, and I’m not convinced that every circumstance in which a reviewer is paid for work others might consider valuable taints the product. I’m starting to wonder if that’s a false distinction we’ve created to measure honesty, when I can think of many reasons a review written for free could be dishonest. NOT that I’m suggesting pay for positive review is okay. Obviously, I’m not. But I can see, frex, why reviewers for PW or the NYT or whatever would feel they deserve to be paid for their work. Because it is work, and their work is helping the publication to earn more revenue, as well.

@Iola: Interesting, re. Amazon reviews. I guess the assumption is that we all know authors are in the promotion business, as well. Although a free review offered by a family member who has every reason to “love” your book kind of undermines the idea that money is the real taint.

@Ros and @Andrea: Intellectually I understand all this and how/why it’s done. If I step back for a second and think about the principles in operation here, though, it’s a fascinatingly artificial (and probably largely false) distinction that’s created between traditional publishers and self-publishers — that big money gets to play in the main sandbox, while small money gets to play in the little sandbox at the back of the house. Totally distinct from issues of quality or format, etc., it’s an interesting sense of legitimacy we’ve all been conditioned into over the years.

@Robin/Janet: I would make the distinction on what the reviewer does for a living. If they are a professional (and by this I mean full time) reviewer who’s JOB it is to review books – that person should be paid. If they work for some sort of publication (full or part time) and are asked to review for said publication – also should be paid.

@becca: I’ve checked out the nook for Web. Basically, you log into your nook account @ BN, then click on whatever book you want to read that’s available in your library. As long as you don’t delete the book from your library (and BN doesn’t go belly-up) the books are available to you. Since I have a nook as well as the nook for PC app, my books are stored both on my computer and in my nook, as well as at BN.

This isn’t of great interest to me, mainly because my nook’s surgically attached, and goes with me everywhere. It also doesn’t allow you access to anything that’s been side-loaded into your nook or app. I can see where it could come in handy for a work computer, where you can’t or don’t want to install the PC app (or download all your NSFW books). It’s also a way to get around the “lend-me” restrictions, assuming you trust the person you’re “lending” to enough to share your BN login and account info.

I used to work at Barnes and Noble up until a few weeks ago. They have a tendency to call things “revolutionary” when in fact it is just a minor step forward. The cloud-based reading is pretty cool though.

(Note that B&N’s “Nook for Web” — as of last night — “only works with the most updated releases” of the browsers they say it runs on. If you happen to run a revision lower of, for example, Safari, you may well see all the optional hyphenation marks as big, ugly boxes. We will not discuss their online support dude going, “Update your browser” as his first flat statement when all I really wanted to do was have someone say, “Didn’t know that! I will send the programmers a bug report. Thanks.” (Because no, I will not buy a new computer for one website.) We’ll see if the email he eventually gave me will lead to any programmers being smacked with tuna until they adjust things, but if this is a “revolution,” I suppose I’m a little revolted right now. *sigh* )

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